I worked at Stirling University for 13 years. I was bullied by my manager, Kathy McCabe. I asked her to stop, but the ill treatment continued, and I raised grievances against her. As a result I was dismissed. Stirling University claims to be committed to allowing employees and students to be able to work and study free from bullying, victimisation and discrimination. However, here I provide evidence of the extreme lengths that management takes to protect and support bullies.

About me and my blog

I have created this blog to highlight the serious problem of bullying at Stirling University and what happened to me when I took action to stop my manager, Kathy McCabe, from bullying me further. Management supported the serial bully, and falsely claimed that I bullied my manager. They then went on to dismiss me claiming that I also bullied my colleagues, especially women, and that I behaved inappropriately with women.

My blog will show the dishonest tactics employed by management to achieve this. It will also show the evidence that they claim they don't see, that clearly demonstrates that my manager and colleagues were lying.

Ironically, this happened shortly after the University Principal, Professor Christine Hallett, wrote to all members of staff claiming that Stirling University was committed to ensuring that we could all work free from bullying, harassment, victimisation and discrimination.

It is very unpleasant to be falsely labelled a bully, and I intend to prove my innocence. I hope it may encourage other targets of bullying to tell their stories too, because bullying is an epidemic that causes a lot of illness, and often leads to suicide and killings. Bully Online is an excellent source of information on the problem.

In my view, Universities should be leading the way to abolish bullying from the workplace, rather than going to the extraordinary lengths that Stirling University has gone to in order to protect and support the bullies. Students too should not feel they have to live with bullying either from staff or other students. I think the government should take action against Universities that refuse to protect individuals from bullies. Universities are partly funded by public money. Senior members of management who are shown to be turning a blind eye to bullying and failing to ensure that grievance and disciplinary procedures are carried out honestly should be held personally accountable. To add insult to injury, large amounts of public money is used to defend unscrupulous managers against complaints taken by targets of bullying to Employment Tribunals. In other words, the government is making you, the tax payer, pay for the defense of bullying universities. Government should ensure that universities are making efficient use of public funds. That includes getting the best from employees and providing protection from bullying and mobbing. Instead that money is being used to cover up the inefficiencies.

Universities will point to their convincingly worded procedures for dealing with bullying. However, words are cheap. Stirling, for example, states in its Anti Bullying document that bullying will be taken extremely seriously. I suppose in one sense that is perfectly true; because they extremely seriously want to cover it up!

My union (UCU) is currenly pursuing legal action against Stirling University because of management's failure to carry out their legal requirment to consult with the unions over redundancies.

According to my union, Stirling University has one of the worst records for bullying in the UK.

At an Employment Tribunal in Glasgow in 2009, Stirling University conceded to having unfairly dismissed a psychology researcher who had complained that a colleague, David Donaldson had replaced her name on a grant application with his own. A university spokesman said that her complaint had been investigated internally, but not upheld. Just as I did, she had written to the Principal a number of times, but the Principal simply denied everything. Surprisingly, Donaldson was then promoted to a professorship. [Full story]

A woman called Anne wrote to me saying that what I've written about Kathy McCabe is disgraceful, and that Kathy would never behave the way I describe. I don't know if this was Anne's genuine belief, or if she was just someone who suppports bullies; perhaps a bully herself. The easiest way for Anne to learn the truth would be for the university to answer the questions listed (HERE) that I asked them on 15 November 2010 to describe how the allegedly flawless grievance procedure could possibly have led to the decision that Kathy had not bullied me, and that I had bullied Kathy. If Anne is correct, then Stirling University is doing Kathy and themselves an injustice by refusing to answer the questions. People will obviously come to their own conclusions why they refuse to answer them.

Of course, if Kathy is able to persuade Anne or anyone else that she did not bully me, then I would love to hear how she does it. I wonder, though, if someone who previously considered bullying and corruption to be disgraceful would change their mind and think it's acceptable once they discover that a friend is guilty of it.

Somehow I don't expect Anne to write back to apologise when she learns the truth and that I am the victim of long term bullying by Kathy.

Stirling University has now sent a fraudulent document to the Employment Tribunal. They claim that it contains the details of the investigation into my grievance in March 2010. It cannot possibly be true because it claims the decision was made after referring to a document that did not exist until more than three weeks after Eileen Schofield made her decision. How embarrassing!